What’s up with online creative agencies?

On the one hand, it’s great to see that creative agencies are starting to “get” the importance of having a good, easy-to-remember domain name. There was Media Rain, a Utah digital creative agency that tried to get the domain name Rain.com. Now we can also add Oasis Technology Partners, Inc to the list. The Boston company tried to snag the domain name Oasis.com through UDRP. It too has failed.

Oasis Technology Partners fell flat on its face, not even convincing the panel that it had rights to the term “Oasis”. The company has filed a trademark application for Oasis claiming a first use in 2001. Since that trademark hasn’t been granted, it needed to show some sort of common law rights. This is usually a very low bar.

Even if the company had shown rights to the term “Oasis”, it would have had a tough time trying to prove that the domain was registered in bad faith and that the owner had no rights or legitimate interests in it. After all, when I saw this case filed I assumed the rock band Oasis was the complainant.

The bottom line to Oasis Technology Partners: if you want this valuable, generic domain name, you’re just going to have to pay for it. Trying to hijack it through arbitration isn’t right.

Two domain sales sites get upgrades.

BargainDomains.com, a site from Francois Carrillo of Domaining.com that offers domain names at a significant discount from their appraised value, is switching to an auction format. Previously, domain names were offered at a fixed price for 30 days. Little information about the auctions is available at this time, but submissions are open at the BargainDomains web site.

Another domain sales site from Carrillo — Catchy.com — has also received some significant upgrades. The first is the recent name change from Mocus to Catchy. Now, Catchy.com is obviously a great domain name. (Carrillo tells me he paid a lot for it, and given who the previous owner was I’m not surprised). But it’s even better since, frankly, Mocus.com never appealed to me because it sounds like mucus.

In addition to the name change, Catchy.com now accepts more types of domain names for inclusion. Previously domains had to be 4 letters or fewer; now five are OK. Also, ccTLDs are now accepted on the site. The site also went through a design overhaul and improved its affiliate program.

Most of the domains currently listed on Catchy.com are pronounceable four character CVCV domains such as Cafi.com, Pomi.com, and Pifo.com, although there are also some three character domains.

Loser in arbitration case makes his case — publicly.

Author Barbara Kingsolver has won a case at National Arbitration Forum for the domain name Kingsolver.com. The soon-to-be-former owner of the domain name is none too pleased.

He has posted a tirade about the case at Kingsolver.com (warning: explicit), which will exist until his registrar has to hand the domain name over to Kingsolver on April 29.

Kingsolver’s agent forgot to renew the domain name and it was later auctioned on NameJet. The buyer sold it to the current owner of the domain, who was then hit with the UDRP.

The owner says he bought it for his computer company, and that he had never heard of Barbara Kingsolver before the complaint:

I have NEVER in my life heard about this person, I swear on my children. I asked many of my friends last week (many of them are from the USA) and they never heard about this person either.

Unfortunately, the owner had yet to change the nameservers on the domain name after purchasing it, so it still resolved to a parked page showing ads related to Kingsolver’s books.

Panelist John J. Upchurch found in Kingsolver’s favor, and ordered the domain transferred.

It would be unusual for a well known person to convince a panel that they have a trademark in their last name. As the owner points out in his tirade, Tom Cruise wouldn’t be able to win Cruise.com and Julia Roberts wouldn’t win Roberts.com. I suspect what happened in this case was that Kingsolver’s prior ownership of the domain played a role in the panelist’s decision. The parked page didn’t help, even though the owner had a legitimate excuse for it.

This isn’t the first time Kingsolver has used UDRP to get a domain name. In 2001 she won an arbitration for BarbaraKingsolver.com.

UDRP on the table at Thursday’s board meeting.

ICANN has posted the agenda for its April 22 meeting, and item 10 reads:

UDRP Policy – relationships with service providers; changes in procedures

What exactly is this about? An ICANN spokesperson told me there’s no additional information available, and what the topic is about won’t be known until the minutes from the meeting are published.

But my guess is this has to do with two things that have created buzz in the community over the past couple months:

1. The fact that there’s no contract between ICANN and UDRP providers.

2. Certain UDRP providers have been playing around with their Supplemental Rules to try to change the overall UDRP process.

For example, Czech Arbitration Court has created a sort of UDRP-lite, where complainants can pay reduced fees for simple cases if the respondent doesn’t submit a reply in the case. Although there may be some merit to such an idea, the supplemental rules certainly weren’t mean for making such a change.

Internet Commerce Association sent a letter to ICANN about the Czech Arbitration Court change over a month ago, and ICANN hasn’t responded.

Phone.com, LLC and Escom, LLC settle case against Sovereign Bank for $300,000.

What do Phone.com, Consultants.com, and Relationship.com have in common? Yes, they are valuable internet real estate. But they are also at the center of an alleged $500,000 heist during 2007-2008.

And, like any case involving domains and theft, Sex.com was also involved.

The Players
In February 2007, Internet Real Estate Group hired Christopher Britt for bookkeeping and controller activities. He left the company in December 2007 but continued to provide bookkeeping services to IREG and associated companies through his firm Priviley, LLC. During this period, the plaintiffs allege that Britt managed to steal over $500,000 from them.

In total, six different companies in some way connected to IREG or its principals initially claimed losses, including IREG, Phone.com LLC (formed with Mike Mann), Consultants.com LLC, Love Tactics LLC, Relationship.com LLC, and an outfit called Escom LLC. Escom, of course, is the entity formed to purchase and operate Sex.com, which is currently in bankruptcy proceedings.

The Heist
According the the plaintiffs, Britt used several schemes to steal from the companies. He deposited a number of checks made out to the plaintiffs into Priviley’s accounts and wrote checks to Priviley using forged signatures. He also completely closed out Escom, LLC’s accounts and managed to deposit the resulting check into his account.

The suit alleged that Britt went into a Sovereign branch on March 4, 2008 and closed out Escom’s checking account, transferring all of the money to Escom’s money market account. On the same day, Britt closed out the money market account and was presented with a Sovereign “Official Check” in the amount of $304,849.62 made out to Escom.

The next day, Britt tried to deposit the Sovereign check made out to Escom into a Priviley bank account even though the check wasn’t endorsed. The bank’s fraud system flagged the check after it was accepted, and the bank notified Britt that it would need a “Confirmation of Endorsement Form” signed by one of Escom’s signatories in order to deposit the check.

According to Sovereign Bank, Britt was authorized to close the Escom account. Sovereign claims that IREG co-founders Andrew Miller and Peter Hubshman had decided to transfer the financial responsibilities for Escom to another entity “As part of their general effort to distance themselves from the operation of Escom”. But Britt was supposed to close out the accounts and transfer the money to a new financial firm, and of course not to Priviley.

The plaintiffs allege that Britt returned with a document he said was signed by Hubshman, but that terms on the form were altered with white-out and that it was then improperly notarized by a Sovereign Bank employee without Hubshman being present.

Although Escom experienced the greatest loss from Britt’s alleged actions, other companies also claimed considerable losses.

For example, A $150,000 investment check from a California trust to Phone.com LLC was deposited into a Priviley account. (Sovereign Bank claims Britt opened and had signing authority on the Phone.com account. Britt was able to endorse the check in Phone.com’s name and then make it payable to Priviley, the bank claims. The plaintiffs argued some of the signatures on the Phone.com account were forged.) Consultants.com, LLC claimed that five checks totaling $40,500 were made out to Priviley using forged signatures of Miller and Hubshman.

Going After the Bank
The plaintiffs blamed the bank for allowing the activity and filed a claim with the bank, asking for $500,961.62 to be returned to Escom, Phone.com, and Consultants.com. Shortly thereafter, the bank froze accounts associated with 19 companies connected to Andrew Miller including Chocolate.com, LLC, Patents.com, LLC, and even IREG. In addition, the bank canceled IREG’s $50,000 line of credit.

The plaintiffs sued the bank in October 2008 for the lost money, treble damages, and legal fees. Over time, the plaintiff list was whittled down to just Phone.com and Escom. On March 1, 2010, the court was advised of a settlement. Although the settlement wasn’t made public by the court, it did appear in a recent document filed in Escom, LLC’s bankruptcy case.

A written consent of the non-founder members of Escom, LLC — signed by a representative of I-95 Investment Group, LLC — discloses that Sovereign Bank agreed to pay $300,000 to the plaintiffs. $60,000 of it will be used to pay legal bills, $158,400 will be paid to Escom’s President Del Anthony Polikretis in his personal capacity, and $81,600 will be paid to Phone.com.

The case kind of makes you wonder — how many more people will try to steal from Sex.com?